How to become a Successful Online Entrepreneur: 4 Essential Steps
To become a successful online entrepreneur, you need to have Strategies, and Systems in place to be able to figure it all out.
But there is more to it than just systems and strategies. You also need to have the right Support and a solid Self-image:
Strategies
Systems
Support
Self-image & Mindset
In the beginning, it might feel as if you’re throwing spaghetti on the wall - hoping that at least one of them will stick and stay. And more or less the only thing you’re trying to do is to gain traction on Social Media.
Chances are you’re trying to figure out how to stand out amongst all the others who seem to offer the same things that you do.
You need to have the 4 essential steps in place; Strategy, Systems, Support and Self-image
1. Strategy
Strategy is one of those words that you can use for almost anything, and it can be made more complicated than it needs to be.
So let me summarize how you need to think in terms of strategy for your online business:
Market Research & Analysis
Before even thinking of publishing a new offer, you need to do proper market research and analysis (if you don’t know how, then read this blog article where it’s all explained.
Through proper market research you will learn what your clients think they want.
You will stop guessing and instead creating an offer that both you and your clients will love.
Also, don’t forget to test your offer on a real audience. Let them co-create the offer with you!
Once you have that sorted out, it’s time to take your offer to the market.
Marketing, Promotion & Visibility
I have met many business owners who are afraid of being visible on social media. As an online entrepreneur you need to be visible.
If you’re not visible, you don’t exist.
If you don’t exist, you won’t sell.
And if you don’t sell, you have no business.
It might sound harsh, but it’s the truth.
You need to get out there. Show people who you are, and what you have to offer.
And remember, since you’ve founded your services on proper market research and tested it, you also know that what you offer is needed.
You will really, truly help people with your services.
With proper marketing, promotion and visibility strategies, and showing up as the authentic you, you will be able to break through the noise and stand out in a crowded market.
Meaning, you will be able to help even more people - and essentially make more money.
Client Attraction & Retention, Sales & Revenue
The sales process that we follow ourselves, and also teach in the Empowered Entrepreneur Program looks like follows:
Once you’ve caught your audience’s attention through visibility (for example on social media), you connect with them.
You can connect with your ideal clients in various ways, through physical or online meetings, informal coffee meetings, in direct and personal messages.
What you need to keep in mind during the connection phase is that as long as you don’t know whether the prospect needs, or even wants your service, you’re not selling.
No-one wants to be sold to.
But, once you know that your service can help them, and they have expressed a wish to learn more about it, then you move to the consult phase.
Depending on the pricing of your services, it might be essential that you hold a sales call. That’s what we call a consult.
Some people call them clarity, discovery or strategy calls. They’re all the same.
The purpose of these calls is to figure out whether your service is what the prospect needs.
The more often you hold a sales call, the better you’ll become at it. If you don’t know how to structure the calls, click this link and it will take you to the High Converting 13 Steps Sales Process.
If your service or online product is rather a low ticket, then sales calls are unnecessary. You send your prospects to an easy to navigate sales page instead of having them book a consult call with you.
To increase your revenue, you need to either increase your prices, OR to increase the number of sales. But what if you’re already so booked out with one-to-one meetings? You don’t have any capacity to take on any more clients.
Well. This is where a scalable online offer comes in.
A scalable online offer can be a course, a membership or a group coaching program. It’s where you are able to serve many people at the same time.
Because your time is limited. And you need to invest your time the best way possible.
With a scalable online offer you will be able to serve more clients, during the same time that you previously served only one.
Meaning.
You will be able to help more people, and make more money.
If you want to learn how to make a scalable online offer, you can watch the series for FREE right here: FREE Scale & Thrive Workshop Here!
2. Systems
Launching through Conversion Events
There are various ways to launch your products and services, and launching is a fun way to do just that, and to provide for the necessary cash injections for business growth.
We use conversion events when we launch, and they can be set up as either a shorter event such as a webinar (pre-recorded video), or a livenar, or a longer event over several days.
A launch can be quite daunting, so make sure you implement a process that takes out all the stress, where you have the metrics in place you need to have to follow up and change the process afterwards.
You need to know what you can improve.
Tech
By mastering your strategy, your Business will grow daily, and that is why you need to understand the essential tech platforms that will allow you to automate with ease and help you to scale.
Standard Operating Procedures (SOP)
I know, I know - back to the corporate world… BUT, having standard operating procedures (SOPs) in place are really essential when it comes to handover to e.g. new employees, and that you don’t need to reinvent the wheel every time you will for example onboard or off-board a new client.
3. Support
Support itself can be divided into five different buckets:
Business Coach & Mentor
Reinventing the wheel was never a good idea, and the same is true for building a business. If you’re dedicated to succeed, you need to seek the support and guidance of someone that has done it before you.
Accountability Partner
When you write down your goals, the probability that you will achieve them increases to 42%.
When you tell someone about them, it increases to 65%. Add an accountability partner to the mix, and your goal achievement is at 95%.
95%
Team
As a business owner, your primary role is to generate revenue. If you spend all of your time on tasks that cost you more than what you would be able to generate, then you’re spending it on the wrong things.
Hire a Virtual Assistant that will support you in building your business. A Virtual Assistant is also a business owner, and has the same struggles and fears that you do. Make sure you hire someone that you trust and that is as dedicated as you are to make your business a success. That doesn’t mean though that they work all day, every day.
Be the boss you wished you had yourself, i.e. a leader. Which brings me to Role Models.
Role Model
You need to surround yourself with people that are a couple of steps ahead of you. People who inspire you to take those scary steps. When you see that they have done it before you, that it works, you will be inspired to think “if they can do it, so can I!”
Family & Friends
Every new business owner makes the mistake of thinking that they will get the necessary support from their family and friends.
You won’t.
Because they don’t get you. They don’t understand what you want to achieve, or why you’re doing it.
They will also not understand that it’s passion that drives your workday.
You cannot count on your family and friends to support you and your business. You need to surround yourself with a new network, where your peers understand you, what you want to accomplish, and why you’re doing it.
Who are there to lift you up when you’re down, and who are there to celebrate with you when you’re having success.
4. Self-image & Mindset
I joined an Elite Business Mentoring Program in the early stages of my coaching business. The investment was really scary, but I never doubted that I would make the money back.
Within six months inside the Business Mentoring Program I:
Stopped to serve clients on an hourly basis;
Raised my one-to-one prices with 418%;
Designed and launched the Empowered Entrepreneur Program;
Had my first 5-figure launch; and
Got booked as a guest lecturer and speaker.
Aside from these tangible wins, my confidence grew immensely and I also made new friends and found my accountability partners. We support, challenge and encourage each other to take those next steps.
I wouldn’t have had these wins without joining that program.
I have joined other mentoring programs since then, and I take everything I learn, and implement it in to my own services. I also add the support and strategy that in my view is missing in these programs.
To make the Empowered Entrepreneur bullet proof for those who follow the steps.
You can learn strategies from anyone, and you probably know quite a few of them already. What will make your Entrepreneurial Journey to a successful one comes down to whether you have the right support, and mindset.
You need to work on your mindset daily. It’s not something that will change overnight. Or by just watching one YouTube video, or listen to one podcast episode.
Everyone started out as a beginner. Not one single person was born successful. And we all have the power to create our own success. Some have a bit more comfortable start than others, but essentially, it will come down to your dedication. Whether you want this hard enough.
There are more than sufficient examples of people who have become successful starting from scratch. And there are more than sufficient examples of people who have become successful even when they started their journey as unemployed or homeless.
Having Strategy, Systems, Support and a confident Self-image in place will help you on that path. And I’m not even saying:
the RIGHT Strategy,
the RIGHT Systems,
the RIGHT Support, or
the RIGHT Self-image
because essentially, it comes down to YOU.
What YOU need
But, and I speak of experience, when you can lean on someone who has done it before you, you will save a LOT of TIME and MONEY.
Book your consult with me today - to figure out whether my team and I are the right Support for you, to help you sort out the Strategy, Systems and your Self-image to speed up your journey and make it a successful one.
